By Kristy Wagner

Staff Writer

Not a soul went hungry on Martin Luther King Jr. Day at First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church in Kennebunk.

Each year the congregation holds a breakfast in honor of King and invites a speaker who focuses on a societal issue and leads a discussion. Kathy Landrum took to the church podium this year to speak on hunger issues in Maine.

Maureen Gill, co-chairman of the breakfast, greeted the congregation that showed up for the potluck breakfast. Church members could sign up to bring breakfast items before the event took place. Children and teenagers walked between the tables and offered beverages to people and cleared plates.

After everyone had a chance to eat, the church choir sang three hymns and the Rev. Carol Strecker introduced Landrum. Strecker heard of Landrum through one of Landrum’s neighbors. Strecker said that after meeting with Landrum she knew she was the right person to speak at the King breakfast.

“(Landrum) started to talk about all of the things she was involved in at the local and then the national and then the global level around hunger,” Strecker said. “Kathy is a master gardener who has a true passion for gardening and she has since the very beginning of her long gardening career.”

Landrum uses her master gardener status to grow food for shelters and food pantries. She volunteers her agricultural skills to the York County communities.

The master gardener’s volunteer program is a national program that educates and trains people in the physical, social and economic quality of agricultural gardening. Landrum went through this program in 2009 through the University of Maine Cooperative Extension and graduated in 2010 as a master gardener.

Landrum, who heard King recite his “I have a dream” speech when she was 5 years old, presented quotes and images of King and explained how his inspiration fueled her fight to lower the instance of food insecurity in Maine and the United States.

“A person is considered food insecure if they lack access to enough food to ensure adequate nutrition,” Landrum said. “Maine is first in New England on the food insecurity rating.”

Landrum said the food insecurity rate for York County is about 13.4 percent. She said the old and young members of a community endure higher instances of food insecurity.

“Is there a food shortage in our world? No,” Landrum said. “There is enough food in our world today for everyone to have enough nourishment to have a healthy and productive life.”

This comes as a surprise to most people, she said.

“It’s the infrastructure of getting the food to the people who need it and the fact that so much of (food) is going to waste that is the problem,” Landrum said.

Landrum outlined ways  York County residents can contribute to the agricultural production of food in their own backyards by building raised garden beds or planting a row of vegetables in one’s flower garden. She shared photos and stories of her gardens and horticultural learning experiences she had along the way.

“I’m learning more every day,” she said about her gardening career.

Landrum talked about Maine Harvest for Hunger, a program through the University of Maine Cooperative Extension. Gardeners, farmers, schools and other groups contribute to Harvest for Hunger by growing food to feed hungry people in Maine. Landrum also shared her experience working with a 7-year-old boy in the cooperative extension’s Kids Can Grow program. The program assigns children a mentor who teaches them how to plant a raised garden bed and grow food.

“I’d like to see the program extended to the middle and high school levels,” Landrum said.

At the end of her presentation, Landrum answered questions from the audience — one from a child about the Kids Can Grow program — and gave the floor to Strecker and Gill, who thanked Landrum and then led the audience in singing “We Shall Overcome.”

Staff writer Kristy Wagner can be reached at 282-4337, ext. 233.